Decrypting file encrypted in Explorer

Issue: File encrypted in Explorer with the RightClick/Properties/Advanced/Encrypt thing. File is on Seagate external HD. Then Windows is reinstalled on PC. Now can't decrypt file. Anything that can be done or are we toast?

Unless you are on a domain and created a recovery agent prior to encryption, then you are most likely toast. EFS is not meant to be recovered without the original encrypting users certificates which are

Unless you are on a domain and created a recovery agent prior to encryption, then you are most likely toast. EFS is not meant to be recovered without the original encrypting users certificates which are stored on the local hard drive. The recovery agent is the only other way to be able to restore something encrypted with EFS.

I read in a 2004 thread the suggestion that OpenOffice might be able to open such an encrypted file. Got any information or an opinion on that? Maybe it worked once upon a time but EFS has been tightened since then. --ron

Openoffice might be able to bypass a word password by some means but not the EFS encryption.

But that encryption goes a bit deeper. So yes toast.

You might be able to use some recovery software like oo-software unerease, maybe there is something left of the original unencrypted file, since windows, afaik, doesn't overwrite the old unencrypted file just masks it as deleted.

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Still subject the ravages of time as sectors are released and overwritten though I suppose. It's been over a month now, so i wouldn't expect to find many intact file fragments. It is very useful to know how EFS works; that it marks the original file as deleted and encrypts a copy. Very useful indeed.

you can test for yourself. take a 500 mb big file (like an iso image) and let windows encrypt that file. you will see that a tmp file will appear and after the conversion is finished the tmp file disappears with the original file and a "new" (the renamed tmp file) in blue appears (if you let windows mark all compressed fkiles with blue, windows explorer setting)

That is plattform independent, doesn't care about the users password as with efs and it's free opensource:

# Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
# Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.
# Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
# Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:

1) Hidden volume (steganography more information may be found here).
2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).

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